God's in His Heaven, All's Right With the World - Everything2.com God's in His Heaven, All's Right With the World by Wigs Thu Jul 06 2000 at 4:50:20 "God's in His Heaven, All's Right With the World" is the last line from the poem Pippa's Song (from Pippa's Passes ) which was written by Robert Browning . Pippa's Song and this line in particular caused Browning many problems because a lot of people just heard the line and didn't consider it within the context it was written. Pippa, in the poem , knew that everything wasn't all right with the world, she was an exploited orphan girl who had to work long hours in terrible conditions. When you look at the whole poem, it should be taken to mean that despite all the evil and injustice in the world, we can still believe that God is there, and thus all is right with the world . As to whether I agree with Browning is another story... It is also interesting to note that this line is used as part of NERV's Mark in Neon Genesis Evangelion . Psalm 2: Is The World Out Of Control?

| Bible.org Psalm 2: Is The World Out Of Control? Related Media Poet Robert Browning wrote, “God’s in his heaven‑‑all’s right with the world.” Where in the world was he? As we look at reality, we have to question Browning. God is in heaven, but all is not right with the world! Since the beginning of time, the world has known strife. The history of man is essentially the history of war. One of the earliest of all historical records, a Sumerian bas‑relief from Babylon (ca. 3000 B.C.), shows soldiers fighting in close order, wearing helmets and carrying shields (James Boice, The Last and Future World [Zondervan], p. 98). There have been almost non-stop wars ever since. In our century, World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars. About 20 million people were killed. Soon after the world was locked into World War II, which claimed 60 million lives. The December 25, 1967, U. S.

News & World Report wrote, “Since World War II [there have been] at least 12 limited wars in the world, 39 political assassinations, 48 personal revolts, 74 rebellions for independence, 162 social revolutions, either political, economical, racial, or religious” (the figures and quote are from Boice, p. 99). Obviously these figures would have to be revised upward significantly in the 25+ years since then. We’ve seen war between Russia and Afghanistan, China and Vietnam, Vietnam and Cambodia, Iraq and Iran, Iraq and Kuwait, and the current war in Bosnia. There have been and still are numerous regional conflicts and violence: Northern Ireland, South Africa, Lebanon, Israel, Azerbaijan, India, Panama, Peru, Colombia, etc. Our own country faces continued racial tensions, a rising crime rate, gang wars, random violence, and increasing moral degeneracy.

Instead of agreeing with Browning that “all is right with the world,” we would probably be more inclined to side with the guy who wrote this limerick: God’s plan made a hopeful beginning, But man spoiled his chances by sinning, We trust that the story Will end in God’s glory, But at present the other side’s winning. (Boice, pp. 124‑125.) We may chuckle at the limerick, but deep down inside we know that the present world scene is no laughing matter. Man is not “in every day and in every way getting better and better.” Is the world out of control? How should we view the present world chaos? A wife said to her husband, “Shall we watch the six o’clock news and get indigestion or wait for the eleven o’clock news and have insomnia?” (in Reader’s Digest [4/86], p. 2). Should we sink into depression and despair? Should we ignore the world and its news, ostrich‑style? Psalm 2 gives us an answer. In it, the author, King David (see Acts 4:25), views the rebellion of the nations against God.

He looks at the chaos of the world scene in his day and says that Though the nations have rebelled against God, He is sovereign; thus, we must submit to Him while there is time. Even though the world scene looks as if God has been on an extended vacation, David shows us that God’s plans have not failed and shall not fail. Everything is under His sovereign control and He will ultimately triumph in His ordained time. Thus David appeals to the rebellious nations to bow before the Almighty God while they still have time. Structure and background of the Psalm: Psalm 2 is the most frequently quoted psalm in the New Testament. It fits together in an interesting way with Psalm 1 to introduce the Book of Psalms. Psalm 1 begins with, “How blessed”; Psalm 2 ends with the same word (in Hebrew). Psalm 1 ends with a threat; Psalm 2 begins with a threat. In Psalm 1, the godly man meditates on God’s law; in Psalm 2, the wicked meditates (NASB = “devising,” NIV = “plot”; same Hebrew word) on how to cast off the rule of God.

In Psalm 1 the theme is the contrast between the righteous and the wicked person; in Psalm 2 the theme is the contrast between the rebellion of wicked rulers and nations and the rule of God’s righteous Messiah. Psalm 1 consists of two stanzas and six verses. Psalm 2 is twice as long, consisting of four stanzas and 12 verses. The Psalm is structured as a dramatic presentation in four acts. In Act One (2:1‑3), David raises the question about the chaos in the world, and the kings and rulers come forth in a chorus to say their lines (2:3). In Act Two (2:4‑6), God calmly sits upon His throne in heaven and speaks His line against the rulers (2:6). In Act Three (2:7‑9), God’s Anointed One speaks and reveals God’s decree or predetermined plan for dealing with man’s rebellion. In Act Four (2:10‑12), the psalmist speaks out again, giving a closing appeal in light of the previous acts. For purposes of grasping the message of the psalm, Acts Two and Three may be grouped together so that the psalmist is saying three things: 1.

The nations have rebelled against God (2:1‑3). But, 2. God is sovereign and has a predetermined plan to judge man’s rebellion (2:4‑9). Thus, 3. We must submit to Him while there is time (2:10‑12). Let’s examine these three thoughts: 1. The nations have rebelled against God (2:1‑3). To understand this psalm, we must realize that on one level it applies to King David. The schemes of these rulers against the Lord and His anointed are rooted in a time in David’s reign when some of his vassal nations sought to rebel (such as 2 Samuel 10, when the Ammonites and Syrians rebelled). David, the Lord’s anointed king over His people, Israel, writes this song to show the folly of rebellion against God’s anointed king because of the promises God had made to that king. Thus, on one level, 2:1‑3 refers to those rebel kings and their attempts to shake off David’s rule over them. But it is also obvious that the psalm goes far beyond David’s experience.

It is ultimately fulfilled only in God’s Anointed (Hebrew, “Messiah”), God’s Son who is also David’s son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, David wrote this psalm not only about himself, but in a deeper and much more complete way, about Messiah Jesus. Thus just as these kings rebelled against King David, so all men have rebelled against King Jesus. The Bible teaches that: A. Satan is the author of this rebellion. Isaiah 14:12‑14 describes the rebellion of Satan in heaven against God. When he fell, he led a portion of the angels with him. Under his authority, these demons now wage war against God and the righteous angels. The world was created as the theater for this great conflict to take place. Man was created in the image of God and placed on earth to reflect God’s image and rule as His representatives over His creation. But the Scriptures also teach that ... B. All people have followed Satan in his rebellion against God. When Adam and Eve succumbed to Satan’s temptation and disobeyed God, the human race fell into sin and thus came under God’s judgment.

This rebellion took on an organized form at the tower of Babel, when proud men came together and proposed to build a tower into heaven to make a name for themselves (Gen. 11:4). The Lord confused their languages and scattered them, which was the beginning of the nations. The pride of those at Babel, who sought to make a name for themselves, was diluted by being divided among the various nations of the earth. But Satan works through the pride of world rulers to weaken the nations through conflict and keep them from submitting to God (Isa. 14:12). As biblical prophecy shows, in the end times, the nations will come together under a single world ruler in defiance of the Lord and His Anointed. Satan is the main force behind this world ruler, the antichrist. But even in His curse upon the serpent, God pointed to the way of redemption that He had planned for fallen man: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He [the woman’s seed] shall bruise you [the serpent] on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel” (Gen. 3:15).

Messiah Jesus, born of a woman, would be bruised on the heel by Satan in death as the sin‑ bearer for the fallen race, but He would bruise Satan upon the head in His triumphant victory over sin and death in His resurrection from the grave. By bringing people from every nation under the lordship of God’s Anointed, Jesus, the rebellion of Satan is thwarted. Thus in His eternal decree, the Father invites the Son, “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession” (Ps. 2:8). Either through their willing submission to the message of the gospel now or through their forced subjection under the rod of the Messiah when He comes to judge the nations, their rebellion will be quelled. Meanwhile, where is God in all this rebellion? Did He go to sleep? Has He lost control? No, the psalmist goes on to show that even though the nations have rebelled against God ... 2. God is sovereign (2:4‑9).

God doesn’t even get up from His throne to deal with the vain schemes of rebellious kings: “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them” (2:4). This doesn’t mean that God gets a kick out of man’s rebellion or its devastating results. “‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live’” (Ezek. 33:11). Rather, God’s laughter shows the folly of rebelling against Him. It shows us that ... A. God has a calm assurance in the face of man’s rebellion (2:4‑6). Mighty men rise up and proudly think that they’re so great and powerful. God laughs: “You’ve got to be kidding!” Who is puny man to try to stand against the Sovereign God? “He removes kings and establishes kings” (Dan. 2:21) according to His will. The mighty Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest ruler on the earth in his day, grew proud and attributed his greatness to himself.

God humbled him with a strange disease, so that he lived in the fields and ate grass like a beast, until he learned that “the Most High is the ruler over the realm of mankind, and bestows it on whomever He wishes” (Dan. 4:25). Napoleon Bonaparte, when intoxicated with success at the height of his power, is reported to have said, “I make circumstances.” God laughs: “Oh, really?” God let him go on for a while, and then He spoke to him in His anger and terrified him in His fury (Ps. 2:5), and Napoleon came to nothing. Did you know that God is not worried about man’s rebellion against Him? He isn’t sitting on the edge of heaven, biting His nails, and saying, “Oh, what am I going to do?” He lets man go on for a while in his rebellion, but then His anger and judgment will come, and man’s proud plans will come to nothing. The psalmist thus goes on to show that ... B. God has a predetermined plan to deal with man’s rebellion (2:7‑9). This plan centers on the person and the power of God’s Messiah, His Anointed one.

*The person of Messiah (2:7): Verse seven obviously goes beyond David to Christ. The verse is quoted several times in the New Testament with reference to Jesus (Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5; 5:5). It plunges us into some deep theological waters that we can never fathom. We can never fully understand the Trinity and the nature of the relationship between the members of the godhead. If we could, God would not be God. We can only go as far as the Scriptures reveal, and no farther. While probably somewhat anthropomorphic (using human terms to describe God) so that we can understand it to some degree, the relationship between the First and Second Persons of the Trinity is expressed as that of Father and Son. This does not imply any inequality, or that there was a point in time in which Jesus was begotten of the Father (in which case He would not be eternal). The scriptures teach, and orthodox theologians for centuries have agreed, that Jesus is eternally the unique Son of God, second person of the Trinity. The Athanasian Creed puts it: “The Son is from the Father alone; neither made, nor created, but begotten ...

generated from eternity from the substance of the Father.” The Nicene Creed expresses it: “The only begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Lights, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father” (quoted in Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology [Dallas Seminary Press], I:316 ). When Psalm 2:7 says, “You are My Son, today I have begotten You,” there are two possible interpretations. Either it refers to the day of the eternal decree, when Christ was declared to be the Son of God and begotten (John Walvoord, Jesus Christ Our Lord [Moody Press], p. 41). Since the decree is eternal, Christ’s Sonship is eternal. Or, “this day” refers to the time when Christ’s identity was manifested, when the Father bore witness to Christ as being His own Son, which was primarily through the resurrection (Rom. 1:4; this is Calvin’s view, Calvin’s Commentaries [Associated Publishers & Authors], 2:129-130).

But both views hold that Christ is eternally the Son of God. God’s predetermined plan for dealing with man’s rebellion involves the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, whom God sent into the world to pay the penalty for man’s rebellion (John 3:16; Gal. 4:4). He died according to the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God at the hands of godless men (Acts 2:23; 4:27-28). But God raised Him from the dead and He ascended to heaven, where He is now waiting to return with power. That’s the second part of God’s plan: *The power of Messiah (2:8‑9): Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, will return bodily to this earth in power and glory to crush all opposition and to reign in righteousness from David’s throne.

John describes his vision of the Lord Jesus in that great day in Revelation 19:15‑16: “And from His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may smite the nations; and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the winepress of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, ‘KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.’” At the end of Christ’s 1,000 year reign, Satan and all who followed him will be thrown into the lake of fire where they will be tormented forever and ever (Rev. 20:10-15). That is God’s plan for dealing with rebellious man and with Satan and His forces. His plan involves the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, who is going to return to this earth in power to put down all rebellion and to rule in righteousness. How should we respond to this fact? 3. We must submit to God and His Anointed while there is time (2:10‑12).

It is not just the proud kings of David’s day who have rebelled against the Lord and His Anointed. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). We have all, in our own way, said toward God, “Let us tear His fetters apart, and cast away His cords from us” (Ps. 2:3). We’ve all said, “I’ll do it my way!” At first glance, you would have thought that everyone would welcome God’s Messiah, who came to save us from our sins. But the issue isn’t just salvation. Jesus didn’t come to save us so that we could get a free ticket to heaven and then go our own way. The issue is one of lordship. The Lord’s Anointed is the King who will reign, if not by our willing submission now, then by forced submission when He comes again. He does not take second place to anyone. Every knee shall bow! Thus the exhortation of 2:10-12 applies to each person: All people must show discernment and take warning. All people should bow in submission and fear before God and give the kiss of obeisance to His Son.

The picture is that of bowing and expressing submission before a monarch so as not to incur his displeasure. We must submit to Christ as Savior and Lord before He returns in judgment, so that we do not “perish in the way.” The urgency of submitting to Christ is expressed by the phrase, “His wrath may soon be kindled” (2:12). The signs of our times point to the soon coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The first time He came in mercy, to save. The second time He comes in wrath, to judge. The end time events predicted in the Bible are all lining up, just as predicted. But even if His coming is delayed, you have no guarantee that you will have another day on this earth. If you do not submit to Jesus Christ before you die, you will face the wrath of His judgment (Heb. 9:27)! As Matthew Henry put it, “Those that will not bow shall break.” Conclusion You can’t find peace and safety anywhere in the world, but only in Christ. A few years ago, a retired couple, alarmed by the threat of nuclear war, studied all the inhabited places on earth, looking for the place where they could most likely escape the threat of war.

They studied and traveled and traveled and studied. Finally they found the perfect place: a small, obscure island off the coast of South America. They moved to the Falkland Islands just before Britain invaded to reclaim that territory from Argentina! World chaos and war will only increase as His coming draws near. If we can’t escape it, what can we do? The last line of the Psalm is God’s gracious invitation: “How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” Don’t run from God; run to Him! Derek Kidner aptly says, “And there is no refuge from Him: only in him” (Psalms [IVP], 1:53). As we see the chaos in the world, we can be truly happy and blessed by taking refuge in our God. The early church took refuge in Him by praying Psalm 2 as they faced persecution (Acts 4:23‑35). In our troubled times, when it looks as if the enemy is winning, we can do the same. Let’s join the early church in doing everything we can to make Christ Lord of all the nations! Even if we should die a martyr’s death, our sovereign God will ultimately triumph!

A cartoon shows a fearful couple, huddled together in bed as they watch TV. The announcer is saying, “And that’s the news. Good night and pleasant dreams!” The only way we can watch the news of this troubled world and have pleasant dreams is if we’ve taken refuge in our sovereign God, who has even the proud rebellion of wicked men under His control. Discussion Questions Since God is sovereign, why doesn’t He just send Christ to crush all rebellion and end all this suffering? Can a person accept Christ as Savior without accepting Him as Lord? Cite biblical support. How would you answer a critic who said, “If God is sovereign over everything, then He is the author of evil”? God’s wrath seems like an outmoded concept in our day. How can we get people to take it seriously? Copyright 1993, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, © The Lockman Foundation God Is Not In His Heaven And All Is Wrong With The World By Sukumaran C. V.

God is in His heaven and, All is right with the world—Robert Browning Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned.—W. B. Yeats 2015 can be described as the most atrocious year in the new millennium so far. The monstrous ISIS and its coldblooded atrocities against humanity terrified the ‘civilised’ world in 2015. It seems that the world is in the vicious grip of terrorist violence and the coldblooded violence against the innocent all over the world testifies that Browning is wrong and Yeats is right.

In the wake of the Paris terror strikes in November 2015, the entire world was ‘shocked’ more than it has been shocked when terror struck Mumbai in the same fashion years ago, when innocent people were blown apart in the Turkish capital Ankara in October 2014, when more than 130 little children in a Peshawar school were shot dead in December 2014, when the hapless Yzidi girls were being raped and made sex slaves and the Yazidi people were virtually being eliminated by the IS monsters, when nearly 40 people were killed and more than 180 injured in the Lebanese capital Beirut hardly two days ago of the Paris tragedy. Mumbai, Ankara, Peshawar and Beirut couldn’t get the attention of the world media as Paris got. That doesn’t matter, because, it has been long since that the world became Euro or West-centric. What matters is that the lasting solution to this coldblooded violence should also come from the West, because, this coldblooded inhumanity spawns from the Western interference in the financial and political affairs of each and every country of the world, especially the Middle East.

In October 2014, two suicide bombs exploded in the Turkish capital Ankara and killed more than 100 people. In December 2014, a horde of gun-wielding people entered into a school in Peshawar (Pakistan) and killed 130 kids firing indiscriminately. On November 12, 2015, forty people were killed and more than 180 injured in two suicide bomb attacks in a residential area of the capital city of Lebanon, Beirut. Hardly two days later, 130 people were killed and many more injured in a series of terror strikes in the City of Lights—Paris, the capital city of France. (The Yazidis worship the Peacock Angel and live in the remote villages of Northern Iraq. The Yazidi religion blends elements of Sufism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. This combining of various belief systems, known religiously as syncretism, is hated by the ISIS bigots.

In his article “Yazidis, Ethnic Cleansing and the Denial of Death”, Michael Mountain says that ‘driven from their homes in Iraq by the murderous Islamic State militia,’ they are ‘raped, thrown into mass graves, even crucified and buried alive.’) What is wrong with the world? Is violence the salient feature of the ‘civilisation’ we are proud of? We blame the terrorists. But do the terrorists manufacture weapons? Who manage the weapons industry? How do the sophisticated weapons reach in the hands of the terrorists or fanatics? Is it the fault of our ‘culture’ that seeks profit by hook or by crook? Is it the fault of the religion(s)? The democracies of the world should retrospect. It is high time we stopped this business of retaliation and counter attacks. Counter terror has only intensified the terror of the fanatics. Enough is enough. Terror is terror, whether it is counter terror or fanatic terror. Why doesn’t the world learn the simple truth that violence breeds violence? All the blood-thirsty terrorist outfits in the world like the IS and the Al-Qaeda are the creations of the Western interference in the Middle East.

The Frankenstein’s monsters wreak havoc on the innocent and yet the Western countries don’t introspect and think for an everlasting solution to end this spread of coldblooded violence in the world. As long as the West under the leadership of the U.S. continues to have their selfish and predatory foreign policy, the monsters like the IS will not be contained successfully. The world is today not under democracy, but under militarism and militarism ‘has failed the human race in every way imaginable’ as an American Citizen, James Peters, wrote in an open letter to President Carter. It was in the beginning of 1991, 10 years before the WTC terrorist attack, the U. S. invaded Iraq. Howard Zinn describes the result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in “A People’s History of the United States”: “The consequences of the war became shockingly clear after its end, when it was revealed that the bombings of Iraq had caused starvation, disease, and the deaths of tens of thousands of children. A U.N.

team visiting Iraq immediately after the war reported that “the recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the infrastructure…Most means of life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous….”” See one of the many ‘civlised’ cruelties perpetrated on the hapless people of Iraq: “In mid-February, U.S. planes dropped bombs on an air raid shelter in Baghdad at four in the morning, killing 400 to 500 people. An Associated Press reporter who was one of few allowed to go to the site said: “Most of the recovered bodies were charred and mutilated beyond recognition. Some clearly were children.” The Pentagon claimed it was a military target, but the AP reporter on the scene said: “No evidence of any military presence could be seen inside the wreckage.”” If young people from Iraq are willingly recruited into camps of the ISIS, can we blame them? Can we stop the violence of ISIS (which originated in Iraq as a result of the devastation of the country by the military strikes of the U.S. and its allies) by invigorated military action?

Let me quote the sane words of an American woman, Amber Amundson, whose husband, an army pilot, was killed in the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11, 2001: “I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation’s leaders, who advise a heavy dose of revenge and punishment. To those leaders I would like to make clear that my family and I take no comfort in your words of rage. If you choose to respond to this incomprehensible brutality by perpetuating violence against other innocent human beings, you may not do so in the name of justice for my husband.” (Quoted from Howard Zinn) Another sane voice is that of Alex Molnar, the father of a twenty-one-year-old Marine who was sent to Iraq to wage war against the Iraqis. In an open letter to President Bush, Molnar asked: “Where were you, Mr. President, when Iraq was killing its own people with poison gas? Why, until the recent crisis, was it business as usual with Saddam Hussein, the man you now call a Hitler?

Is the American “way of life” that you say my son is risking his life for the continued “right” of Americans to consume 25 to 30 percent of the world’s oil?...I intend to support my son and his fellow soldiers by doing everything I can to oppose any offensive American military action in the Persian Gulf.” (Howard Zinn) Robert Bowman, a former lieutenant colonel in the U. S. Air Force, wrote even three years before 9/11: “We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism….Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children…In short, we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us?

Who would bomb us?” (Howard Zinn) The ‘democratic’ governments world over should listen to the sane and tolerant voices of the people like the wife of the army pilot, the father of the U.S. Marine, and the lieutenant colonel and learn that the permanent solution for the terrorist menace overpowering the world lies outside the field of military action. Let's mourn for those killed in the World Trade Centre terrorist attacks, Let's mourn for the victims of Paris terror strikes, and Let's mourn for the victims of each and every terrorist attack that occurs in any part of the world. But Let's equally mourn for the victims of U.S. and NATO bombings and air strikes in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, and in every part of the world too. If today God is not in his Heaven and all is wrong with the world, the responsibility mainly goes to the U. S. and its European allies whose interventionist policies wreak havoc in the Middle East. God is not in the heaven because He has fled fearing the humans and their destructive ways.

In the chapter titled “Why civilization is killing the world, Part I”, of his book “Endgame”, the American writer Derrick Jensen says: “In Vietnam, the CIA set up its notorious Operation Phoenix, a systematic program of assassination, terror, and torture. It condoned confining prisoners in “tiger cages,” five-by-nine-by-six-foot stone compartments, where three to five men would be shackled to the floor, beaten, mutilated. Their legs would wither, and they would become paralyzed, or at best reduced for the rest of their miserable lives to scuttling like crabs. Buckets of lime were emptied upon them. Elsewhere in Vietnam, CIA assets applied electric shocks to victims’ genitals and threw victims out of helicopters in order to force their associates to talk. More recently in Afghanistan, U.S.-backed troops loaded 3,000 prisoners into container trucks, sealed the doors, and left these to stand for days in the sun. A U.S. commander ordered an Afghan soldier to shoot bullets through the containers’ walls to provide air holes. Soon enough, blood began to stream from the containers’ bottoms.

Those victims who survived were dumped in the desert and shot …” Howard Zinn says in “A People’s History of the United States”: “It seemed that the United States was reacting to the horrors perpetrated by terrorists against innocent people in New York by killing other innocent people in Afghanistan…A journalist with the “Boston Globe”, writing from a hospital in Jalalabad, wrote: “In one bed lay Noor Mohammad, 10, who was a bundle of bandages. He lost his eyes and hands to the bombs that hit his house after Sunday dinner….The hospital’s morgue received 17 bodies last weekend….yesterday, a bomb’s damage could be chronicled in the life of one family. A bomb had killed the father. In one bed his wife who had severe head injuries….Around her, six of her children were in bandages…One of them, Zahidullah, 8, lay in a coma.”” If the people of Afghanistan are willingly recruited into the camps of ISIS, can you stop them by military action? Can you intimidate people like the young boy Zahidullah by military action, when they were forced to be terrorists by the same monster called military action? Violence breeds violence.

The so called ‘war on terror’ started immediately after the 9/11and it has been going on relentlessly ever since. But the coldblooded terror is still not only contained, but also it strikes in every part of the world at will. The reason is that we can’t eliminate a disease without eliminating the sources from where it springs, without totally removing the reasons that cause it. The world is waging the war on terror without addressing the reasons that create the terror. As long as this attitude is not changed, both the war on terror and the terror will continue to rip the world apart and the innocent will continue to be the victims of both—the cold blooded violence of fanatics and the cold blooded violence of the war on terror. Those who killed the innocent people in Ankara, those who killed the little kids in Peshawar, those who killed the people in Beirut and in Paris commit such coldblooded killings in the name of the religion. It is said that the fanatic outfit IS has re-established the Caliphate under its chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It is said that they believe in Islam.

But if their version of the religion is Islam, it means that the first Caliph, the real and benign Abu Bakr is not an Islam. Because his directions to the ‘Army of God’ ran as the follows: “Be just; the unjust never prosper. Be merciful; sly neither old men, nor women, nor children. Destroy neither fruit trees, nor grains, nor cattle. Keep your word even to your enemy. Molest not those men who live retired from the world” In “The Historical Role of Islam”, M. N. Roy writes: “There is no end of testimonies to prove that even in the predominantly martial period of their history, the Muslims were far from being barbaric bands of fanatical marauders, spreading pillage and rapine, death and destruction in the name of religion. Then, the period of conquest was short, as compared to the long period of learning and culture that flourished subsequently under the patronage of the Khalifs…” Then how is it possible for ‘barbaric bands of fanatical marauders’ like the IS operate in the name Islam? Is it the fault of the religion or the result of the Western interference in the Middle East?

Deborah Root, the author of “Cannibal Culture” says that ‘we must face the possibility that something is dreadfully wrong with society and that this is somehow connected to the bloody history of Western culture, a bloodiness that surpasses all others.” The U.S. foreign policy has been the curse of the world long since. Almost all the human-right violations and atrocities committed on the people world over since the Second World War are either by the U.S. or by the monsters like Al-Qaeda and ISIS (and even the terrorists who wage ‘holy war’ against India with the help of Pakistan) that are indirectly spawned by the U.S. foreign policy. Analyzing the U.S. bombing on Tripoli (1986), Stephen Shalom wrote in his book “Imperial Alibis” (1993): “If terrorism is defined as politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets, then one of the most serious incidents of international terrorism of the year was precisely this U.S. raid on Libya.” The U.S. hasn’t still stopped its international terrorism. That said, we should not put all the blame on the U.S. alone and take rest.

We should analyze why such atrocious organizations ‘whose members take pride in carrying out beheadings’ spawn in the name of religion. In the name of religion, why these heinous fellows are beheading innocent people, raping the hapless girls and women and tell them either to convert or to die? The world today direly needs love and tolerance and non-violence. To have such a world, the U.S. and the West should retrospect and shun their predatory economic policies that create terror and terrorists. And the true followers of Islam should try to free the religion from the grip of the fanatics and democratise it. Then God may again be in His heaven and, All will be right with the world. Sukumaran C. V. is a former JNU student and his articles on gender, communal, environemenatl and other socio-political issues are published in The Hindu, Mainstream etc. Email id: lscvsuku@gmail.com The Way I See It The Way I See It GOD’S IN HIS HEAVEN AND ALL’S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD...

The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his Heaven - All's right with the world! The famous quote is from the end of Robert Browning’s “Pippa’s Song,” a poem within a longer piece, “Pippa’s Passing.” It is the song of an exploited orphan girl who was abused by her employer and by society generally. She had to work long hours under terrible condition. I’m not sure what Browning is trying to say. Perhaps he is saying that even though there are people living in terrible conditions, despite all the injustice and evil in the world, we should still believe that God is with us and, therefore, all is right with the world. If that is indeed what Browning believes, I disagree with him. Why does this matter to me? Today, for the first time in my life, I called 911... not for my own safety but because I came upon a disturbing situation as I approached the entrance to the Linda Vista Public Library.

A woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, was sitting clutching her knees to her chest; her head was thrown back and her face was contorted in at least sorrow if not pain. She was howling and crying over and over words which I thought were, “Why do you hate me?” A man whom I thought to be perhaps twice her age was standing nearby looking as if he didn’t know what to do. A little boy of perhaps eight was standing near the man. People were passing on their way to and from the library. Everybody looked but nobody approached the man and child and crying woman. I parked my bicycle and waited for a minute trying to decide what to do. Then I heard the woman’s words more clearly, “Why do you hurt me? Why do you hurt me? Why do you hurt me?” Over and again she howled, “Why do you hurt me?” The man stood unsmiling, even sorrowful, but quite still. The boy clung to the man’s leg and said, “Let’s go home.” I couldn’t pass them by without doing something, so I went to them and asked if there was something I could do.

The woman looked up at me, held out her arm and pointed to her wrist and said, “He hurts me. He abuses me. He hits me. He threw me down.” I didn't see bruises. The silent child looked at me. The man’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t become angry. He didn’t look down at the woman. He looked at me and raised his hand to his head and made the circles we use to express craziness in someone else. I asked again if I could help. He shook his head, No. I asked if the boy was the woman’s son. He shook his head, Yes. I said to him, “Someone should do something. This isn’t good for anybody, especially for the boy.” The man shook his head in agreement. I left them and went into the library where business seemed to be going on as usual. I asked the first librarian I saw if he knew about the situation outside. He said he did. I asked of anybody had done anything. He said they had not. I told him I thought it would be irresponsible to ignore a woman crying that she has been and is being abused. He agreed. I called 911 on my cell phone.

The operator took the information... first who I was and where I was, whether a fight was happening as we spoke. She asked me to describe them. She said she would send a police car. I went back outside and waited. The police car came within five minutes, and I got on my bicycle and rode down the hill to where I live. As I rode, I couldn’t shake the phrase, “God’s in his heaven - All’s right with the world.” I couldn’t shake the heavy sense that all is not right with the world. At the time I didn't want to think about whether or not God is in his heaven. Then I remembered where I first came across the Browning quote. I was the only person who signed up for a college poetry course, and assumed the class didn't make, but the professor insisted on doing the course if I was willing. I was. We met twice a week in his office. At first he talked and I listened. Then he read poetry and I listened, and then I read and he listened. Then we both talked and we both listened, and the course was absolutely as good as college courses ever get.

One of the poems was Robert Browning’s "Pippa Passing." I must confess that probably the reason I have remembered the poem so well and the discussion so exactly after all those years (at least fifty) was that he told me about Browning’s mistake in another passage, the one that goes like this: But at night, brother Howlet, far over the woods, Toll the world to thy chantry; Sing to the bats’ sleek sisterhoods Full complines with gallantry: Then, owls and bats, cowls and twats, Monks and nuns, in a cloister’s moods, Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry! Mr. Malloy explained to me that Browning misunderstood a line from a 17th century rhyme that goes like this: "They talk’t of his having a Cardinal’s Hat/They’d send him as soon an Old Nun’s Twat." Browning assumed that the line following Cardinal’s hat must have been a reference to some article of clothing in a nun’s habit. No, indeed. “Twat” in the seventeenth century was a vulgar reference then as it is today.

So, as it usually happens in order for us to get through the day, my tears coming down the hill had turned to lighter thoughts by the time I got home. But I won’t forget the crying woman, the stoic man, and the frightened child outside the library just up the hill from my house. By the way, you may know a town in Kentucky called Pippa's Passing. I haven’t a clue how it got its name... probably from an English teacher who didn’t know any more about twats than Browning did. I hasten to say the reason I know the town is that I rode through it once on a bicycle trip from Pacific to Atlantic. Of course, I thought of Mr. Malloy. Pippa's Passing is not all that far from Hazard, Kentucky, which surely must have a good story behind its name. Neither Mr. Malloy nor Robert Browning, as far as I know, had anything to do with Hazard. Ruth and Bill Derisi found these leaf skeletons and thought I might like to photograph them. They were right. I stopped trying to make a connection between my writing today and the leaves. Posted by God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.

@Quotio 1,155 Comments There are not yet any comments on this quote. Why not register / login and be the first? This quote is just one of 32 total Robert Browning quotes in our collection. Robert Browning is known for saying 'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.' as well as some of the following quotes.

Question: Which author wrote"God is in his heaven, all's rightwith the world"?
Answer: ROBERT BROWNING